Writing

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My Superpower: Michael J. Martinez

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My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Michael J. Martinez to talk about how his super-powered burrowing writer-mind relates to The Gravity of the Affair. The scene:  a typical weekend, with my daughter and her friends running about the house, doing the inexplicable, strange and occasionally cute things girls do. My wife is reading. I’m in my favorite chair, laptop on lap, fingers flying through The Gravity of the Affair, my novella set in the Known Worlds of the Daedalus series. A ship is under attack by unknown privateers. Alchemical cannon fire lances through the Void into wooden hulls,

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The Disquieting Guest — A Panel on Horror Writing

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Friday afternoon, I took part in a panel on horror writing organized by the Manitoba Writers’ Guild and hosted by the Arts and Cultural Industries Association of Manitoba. Chaired by Maurice Mierau, the panel consisted of Chadwick Ginther (author of the Norse urban fantasies Thunder Road and the recently-launched Tombstone Blues), Michael Rowe (in Winnipeg as part of the book tour for his ghost story Wild Fell) and myself. It was a very cozy setting to talk horror while a -30 C windchill howled outside, and while the event is fresh in my mind, I thought I’d touch on a couple points that came up in the discussion (and I thank Chris Borster for the idea of doing so). So here we go; any misrepresentations in the paraphrasing that

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

178. Emma Newman (a.k.a. Tea & Cake) — The Split Worlds Trilogy

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode178AnInterviewWEmmaNewman/SandF%20–%20Episode%20178%20–%20An%20Interview%20w%20Emma%20Newman.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSEmpires, the Fae, and cake, oh my!  Emma Newman, author of The Split Worlds Trilogy, joins Paul and Shaun to discuss her novels, the mentality of empires, feminism in her work, history, and much more. We hope you enjoy the episode! Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 178 — Download (MP3) Show Notes: Emma’s Website Emma’s Twitter Emma’s Books Tea & Jeopardy Angry Robot Books You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone. Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

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Worldbuilding: Why It Ain’t So Easy

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So, I appeared at an event at the San Marcos Library on Sunday where I’d been asked to give a talk about research. During the question and answer section, someone asked me why I would go to all the trouble of setting a fantasy in the real world? “Why do that when you can just make stuff up? That’s easier, after all. It’s a short cut!”  Yeah. Um. Not so much. First, writing isn’t easy, nor is making up stuff. Worldbuilding is hard work — very difficult, detailed work. If you’re not thinking about the worldbuilding aspects of your story that much, then what you’re doing is probably derivative, and that’s not good. It’s far easier to work with environments with which the reader is already familiar than it is to make up a foreign world and make it plausible. There are certain cues

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

177. Nick Mamatas — Love is the Law (An Interview)

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode177NickMamatas/SandF%20–%20Episode%20177%20–%20Nick%20Mamatas.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSPunk, the occult, and punchy literature, oh my!  Nick Mamatas returns for a proper interview!  Stina and Shaun tackle the politics of his work, the world of crime fiction and that dirty word, “genre,” and much more. We hope you enjoy the episode! Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 177 — Download (MP3) Show Notes: Nick’s Website Haikasoru You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone. Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

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LitBits: The Politics of Author/Work Separation

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I’ve been thinking about this problem a lot recently, firstly for some obvious reasons (a certain movie) and secondly because of some of the things I’ve been discussing with my students in my American Literature course.  And one of the questions that keeps coming up for me is this:  how do we know when we have crossed the line by holding a writer accountable for the controversial things they write? As an example, I am currently teaching Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Wild Meat and Bully Burgers.  This particular novel is not all that controversial, though it certainly has its issues, but her later book, Blu’s Hanging, was the cause of much controversy in 1997/1998.  The Asian American Studies National Book Award she received was later annulled after public outcry; many critics and academics have written about the incident since.[1]  One of the problems Asian American (and other) critics had with the book was its representation of Filipinos in Hawai’i (they are dirty, morally questionable, violent, and/or pedophiles) and the complete absence of indigenous Hawaiians in the novel.  Effectively, critics charged Yamanaka with failing to self-censor herself in a stereotypical context; in

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